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Category: Car Racing

I have been having a blast with TrackMania the last few days. If you love arcade style car racing like I do, building your own tracks, cars and competing against millions of people world-wide, this is your game.

There are several flavors of this game and I have tried them all. Some will not work on some machines, so I will stick to the two that I know will work on Win 7, Win 8 and Win 10. Some of the others may work if you are running XP, and if you are a Linux fan, yes, you can get TrackMania on Linux via the software loader too. You can also get TrackMania on Steam (As I did) and then if you happen to get a version that will not work (As I did) you can request a refund from Steam (I did and I got it within a few hours).

So the two that will work on 7, 8 and 10 are TrackMania Nations Forever (Free on both Steam and from the website.).

So, what are the differences in the two. Quite a bit. You can edit and create tracks in both versions. You can import cars and paint in both versions. You will not have access to the advanced track editor and the ability to play in Stunt Mode, Platform Mode, Race Mode or Puzzle mode. You may not believe it but there are millions of users world-wide of both games and you can play against any of them.

For me the advanced editor and the extra terrains and tracks was worth it. Less than $40.00 at the Nadeo site and just under $30.00 on steam.

I purchased the United version and then did a search on the web and found thousands of add-ons from fans, Nadeo and fanatics all around the world. Want to drive a Camaro?

And download one. There are instructions to tell you how to do it. It isn’t rocket science, just put the zipped car file in the correct directory and when you next start the game it is there for you to race with.

NASCAR fan? Yes, there is a base of NASCAR fans that hold races and have their own tracks you can add.

In the games the editors are built right in, you don’t have to search them out and pay more for them. Making a new track is very straight forward. Making your own car is not. If you are a modeler you can easily find the directions on how to do it, build it and then have it in the game. There is a module to paint cars, and the Zipped skins included with the model are in the DDS (Direct Draw) format and so you can get the DDS add-on for GIMP and edit or make new skins as you choose. In the paint editor you can simply unwrap the car and paint it a different color.

The Racing: The racing is pure adrenaline based arcade style. My son Josh got me playing an old DOS based game called Stunts (I still have it) and this game reminds me of that vastly updated for modern graphics and game play. Check it out on Steam or the Nadeo websites and I hope you enjoy it. Dell…